Welcome back to Cato Daily Podcast. I'm Anastasia Glova. Today is January 2nd and this is the first

podcast of the new year. Today we'll talk to Cato's Executive Vice President David Bose about

his thoughts on what 2007 in politics will bring.

What are your thoughts for the new year in politics?

What do you think the Democrats have in store for us?

The Democrats got a lot of votes from Libertarian and Independent voters in 2004 and especially in 2006.

But they got these votes mostly just by not being the Republicans.

They didn't really offer anything to Libertarian-leaning voters. They just weren't the Republicans and

that was good enough. So now the Republicans have put 15% of the electorate

the Libertarian block out on the table. And now the Democrats are in

control of Congress, so they have a chance to lock these voters in. But I don't see much

evidence that they're going to. They're not stepping up to

the plate to do something about the war. They are not doing much about the

Republican abuses of civil liberties, and they're talking about lots of new spending programs.

They keep saying they're fiscally conservative but they're talking about lots of

new spending programs. So I think the Democrats are going to drive these voters away in their first few months

and Libertarian voters are going to once again be stuck in the middle between the big spending big government Democrats and the

Republicans who have also become a big government party. So I'm not sure exactly

where we go after that. Don't you think that comparatively the Democrats will run a much more balanced budget

than what the Republicans have wrought in recent years?

I don't think the Democrats will run a balanced budget, but it's possible that the combination

of a Democratic Congress and a Republican

...